The Works of Tacitus (C. Cornelii Taciti Opera)

...on and regarding Tacitus's Agricola (Meiningen, 1823), and most ingeniously by Walch in the Prolegomena to Tacitus's Agricola, pp. XXXIII—LXXIV, to whom it will be permitted to refer readers.

In the Introduction or Prologue (Chapters 1, 2, 3), the author teaches why and when he meditated on bringing his historical books, and this one first, into the light. For after the cruel and hostile times of Domitian had been succeeded by the most blessed age of Nerva and Trajan, and Tacitus had decided to devote the leisure into which he had withdrawn to composing a record of events performed by Roman Emperors and leaders from Augustus onwards; it is no wonder that, for the sake of beginning, he provided a singular document of his genius, which both piety demanded and the dignity of Agricola required. This man was, of course, both his father-in-law and a man excelling in the virtues of genius and spirit, no less famous for the arts of peace than those of war; by him, the province was administered with the greatest prudence, and the most bellicose tribes of Britain were subdued by arms, which previously had been of so little concern and so unknown to the Romans that they had not even known it to be an island until the fleet of Agricola had sailed around it. See Agricola ch. 10 and 28.

The Life of Agricola itself can be divided like a drama into three parts. Described in the first (chapters 4–9) is his childhood education in his father's house and in the seat and teacher of literature, Massilia; his keener study of philosophy, from which his spirit, though burning, was restrained by his mother's prudence, which is a most difficult thing to do, so that he retained moderation; his first rudiments of camp life in Britain and in the company of Suetonius Paulinus, to whom as a young man he owed his skill, experience, stimulation, and desire for military glory; and the magistracies and honors mandated to him in the City, in Asia, Britain, and Aquitania. In the second part (chapters 10–38) are the deeds brilliantly performed by him in the province of Britain, which had not been well and happily administered by other legates and prefects. In the third, in which the knot tied by the author is untied (chapters 39–46), are the final fates of a most excellent man, recalled from a most ample field of glory by the envious Domitian; to which an Epilogue or Apostrophe is subjoined.

By far the greater part of the book looks to the public rather than the private life of Agricola (for it is of less interest to us to know the latter than the former), and most of all to Britain...

Works of Tacitus, Vol. I.